In the late 1960s, Nevada and California players focused on five-card stud. The late Major Riddle was born in Texas, but lived many years in Nevada and didn’t have any experience in Hold ’Em when he got involved in a game with the legendary Johnny Moss at the Dunes casino.

Addington recounted that a hand took place where the two got involved in a heads-up pot, and Moss didn’t even bother to look at his two hole cards. Yet, he bet every chance he got, and Riddle called them all down.

The final board was K-K-9-9-J.

Moss moved all-in after the river, and Riddle called.

If I may digress for a moment, Moss didn’t exactly have a completely clean reputation at the table. If he saw an advantage or an opening, he took it, so when he proceeded to turn over a pocket pair of nines for quads, I’m led to believe that he knew what he had all along.

As for Riddle, he turned over a pocket pair of twos … otherwise known as the “ducks.” He didn’t have enough understanding of the rules to know that the board completely negated his hand into nothing. Riddle’s hand was the board, and Moss was taking free money.

Hands like that are unlikely to go down nowadays, when 99.99 percent of the players that plop down in a cash game or tournament seat have enough of a fundamental understanding to Hold ’Em to make them a potential danger.

I don’t really have any strong opinions about whether or not the “old guard” or the “new guard” produced a better quality of player, but the edges are certainly smaller nowadays.

Doyle Brunson found his edges by manually flipping thousands of different hands and card combinations in motel rooms, documenting the results.

Today? Well, there are plenty of online poker scenario calculators that will produce the percentages with a few mouse clicks.

In the old days, it could take a year to play 10,000 live hands. Modern players, at least the ones who still have access to online poker games, can amass that much experience in a week or so.

WSOP schedule released: I’ll break the schedule down a little further down the road, but for now, start looking to book vacation dates between May 29 through early July. But this really stands out in a horrible way for poker …the $10,000 buy-in “Main Event” won’t close out the WSOP for the first time in like, ever. The final event in the 78-tournament schedule will be the outrageously priced $1 million buy-in “The Big One for One Drop.”